MEET THE ARTIST:
Tawney was born into a large family of well known & highly reputable Navajo silversmiths who have all seemed to have made a name in the industry.. After all,when your father is "Lonnie Willie" & a few of your uncles are Ronnie & Rudy Willie(Rudy is married to jeweler Happy Piasso-see listings) & your brother is "Cooper Willie" & your cousins are Dakota & Shaminika Willie, well then you may understand why there was no escaping the art of Navajo silversmithing for this artist..(All these names are in my listings)

When you consider how far back Navajo silversmith's go, well then Tawny would be considered relatively new to the industry & was taught by her dad Lonnie (Who is now retired) where he started having Tawny working with copper since it's a less expensive metal,so if there were mistakes(Which there always is!) it wouldn't be so costly.

Tawney shares both Navajo & Sioux blood lines & was raised on the Navajo reservation in the town of To’hajiilee,NM (Toe-hah-jah-lee) & after graduating from school,moved to South Dakota to live with her mom at that time. She then left SD to be closer to her dad & now resides in Albuquerque, where she spends most days creating jewelry & being a mom..

It's her leaning on Lonnie's wealth of knowledge & her repetitious work that has helped her to become the artist she is today & continually gets artistically inspired from her surroundings, where she'll then turn those ideas into pieces of art & is constantly growing.I hope you find her workmanship & her art to be as impressive & as beautiful as I do!!
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THE EARRINGS:
What you're going to get with Tawney's jewelry is the fact that literally EVERYTHING will be done by hand from start to finish, just like her father taught her & like her father's mother & father taught him. And so with that said,these were made where she "Freehand" cut both the inner & outer tear drop shaped drops of sterling..The large outer portion she did with a scalloped perimeter that 'softens' the overall look & soldered a garland of little beads that lays along the center, while the smaller free moving dangle has twisted wire along the middle part of the sterling.These are anchored from a fabulous looking pear cut of Egyptian turquoise that has all that wonderful warm brick colored matrix that's known to this turquoise.

These are heavily oxidized & will go with a lot of todays oxidized Native American jewelry.. These are traditional Navajo,but every bit contemporary!